An old friend nudged me to write something about parenting and music. Benjamin Spock didn't offer much guidance in the field of raising a good music fan. And I'm not sure I have more insight beyond a decade of trial-and-error experience. And my kid is 10, so the future is unwritten.

But the subject has been banging around my skull this month because I made a particular music-related decision that will play out this week involving Tom Petty, PJ Harvey and decades of personal and familial music history. I figured the kid should be involved, too. I asked if she remembered some favorite concerts.

"Give me a little time to make a top 5 list," she said.

That's my girl.

The first concert I recall was Ray Charles, who happened into the Paramount Arts Center in Ashland, Ky. Years after his peak, Charles still left an incredible impression. Watching him, I realized performance wasn't recitation. For a good performer, it was bone deep.

I don't know how old I was when Dad made a point to play records for me. Not playing what he was going to play, mind you, which is just what he did in the car and at home after work and on the weekends. Rather, playing something for me as a transfer of information and energy. He played Bob Dylan's "Bringing It All Back Home," Neil Young's "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere" and "Best of the Doobies."

Two out of three, to pinch from Meat Loaf, ain't bad.

From vinyl and cardboard he built a boat, put me in it and nudged it into a river. He'd throw in some rations: Lyle Lovett's "Pontiac," Steve Earle's "Guitar Town" and the obvious Beatles- and Stones-type fare.

I learned to handle the albums with care - and to avoid playing Nerf basketball in the den when a record was on the turntable.

As kids, my brother and I would plunge into the woods at the local country club and retrieve lost golf balls to resell to our grandfather. My brother saved his money. He's a financial planner. I bought music at every opportunity.

Tom Petty was the first musician whose work felt like my own currency in repaying a debt to my father. His music had a rootsiness that made him presentable to Dad, a guy born in 1944, in a way the '80s new wave and the '80s underground weren't. The former leaned too much on style, the latter was a little spartan, too politically inclined and, also, outside his line of view. No platform existed for the Minutemen in eastern Kentucky.

B B B

What qualifies as one's first show?

On Hazel's due date, she showed no sign of arriving, so my wife and I went to see the Violent Femmes.

Maybe she heard Neil Diamond in utero. One night my eight-months-pregnant wife and I couldn't decide between Social Distortion and Hall and Oates shows. We managed to catch both. Maybe this emboldened me to take Hazel along to shows. I didn't see any reason parenthood had to be a form of house arrest.

When she was still crawling, I'd take her to daytime performances at the local record store. She couldn't affect anybody's experience negatively there; it was easy to whisk her away if things weren't going well.

I didn't play children's albums. I played what I was going to play in the car and at home after work and on weekends.

I don't know what the goal was, other than offering a variety of music and trying to return regularly to the things that caught her attention. Those things often weren't connected logically: Roger Miller and Vampire Weekend. The Ramones and Spoon. I liked what I liked, and she liked some of what I liked, so when she was around, I emphasized what we both enjoyed. There was plenty of time to indulge in hour-long drones after she went to sleep.

By the time Hazel was 4, my wife would take her to musical theater productions, and I'd bring her along to early shows at smaller venues geared toward singer-songwriter types. She liked Wall of Voodoo, so we went to see Stan Ridgway, who gave "Mexican Radio" the night off. She was irked.

"What's the artist gonna do?" I asked her.

She shrugged.

"The artist is gonna do what the artist is gonna do," I said. That's the closest I've come to coaching her with music.

Ninety minutes into the Newman show, I could feel her fidgeting. "Why isn't he playing 'Simon Smith?' " she whispered between songs.

"Hazel, what's the artist gonna do?"

She sighed. "What the artist is gonna do."

B B B

Hazel has had good shows and others, such as the Avett Brothers, where she fell asleep - not the fault of their music, it was just a late gig. She's been to a few festivals, which she liked for an hour or two.

She says her memory of the Leon Redbone show is vague, yet she slips into a faux Redbone voice when singing "Shine on Harvest Moon." She got to see Prince in Oakland, Calif., getting a high-five from the mellow guy in front of her when she sang along to "Starfish and Coffee."

"His cigarette smells weird," she said.

At some point, she'll steer her boat down some other little tributaries.

We saw Taylor Swift at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. Swift was on her 1989 tour, which was funny because 1989 was the last time I was in that stadium, to see the Grateful Dead.

Ultimately, music is one of the best ways I've found to connect with the world.

That said, I've been to hundreds of shows alone, and I find that quite comforting as well. If I can pass along anything to her, it would be that. Dig something or don't, and be comfortable with that. Go see it and think about it.

At 10, she has a more refined palate with regard to music's thematic content than I did at that age. I was a kid moved by riff and groove, the viscera of popular music. Hazel has known for years that "Highway to Hell" is about the emotional erosion of travel and not about Satan. That said, she recognizes "Hell's Bells" is probably about Satan.

Listening to "Mayflowers" - a song by country singer Ashley Monroe - Hazel picked up on the connection between seasons and depression. "So it's about living with someone who's struggling?" she asked. "Waiting for them to get to a better season?"

I don't know if I had anything to do with that interpretation. If so, maybe I did something right.

I've been asked, "How do you keep your kid from listening to crap?"

I don't.

Ideally, I'll have an open ear to what she brings back in the years to come. For the time being, I suppose I have a little more influence on her listening.

B B B

PJ Harvey is a great study in how I think music is best made and absorbed.

She's roughly my age and started making music about the time I was out of the house and finding musical things on my own. Her first album sounded like nothing I'd heard, full of abrasive guitar and vocals that made no apologies for the provocative and at times combative lyrical content. Polly Jean Harvey was messing with musical and patriarchal convention.

Some pulled the ripcord after her earliest works. I've found her to be a more compelling artist across time, writing with a mix of excitement and anxiety about love on one standout album, the deterioration of an empire on another. In December, she announced her first Houston show in over a decade, which was a date I wouldn't consider missing. Two days later, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers announced a show here. Both concerts are this coming Saturday.

What to do? The decision wasn't difficult. Operating alone, I'd have chosen Harvey, the rarer experience. I've seen Petty multiple times. But I'm not operating alone.

Hazel has become enchanted by and interested in Petty's music over the past year. She was drawn to the hooks, sure, but she's since commented on how he writes about the ways connections between people can be made and then strained. The show has cross-generational weight. Plus, I like the idea of her seeing an old-school rock band.

She's going in with years of experience, so she knows to keep song expectations managed. But the excitement is palpable.

"I worry I'm forgetting some," Hazel said of that top 5 list. "Taylor Swift. Randy Newman. Prince, obviously. Robyn Hitchcock. There are a lot of other good ones. Noel Gallagher … ."

Andrew Dansby covers music and other entertainment, both local and national, for the Houston Chronicle, 29-95.com and chron.com. He previously assisted the editor for George R.R. Martin, author of "Game of Thrones" and later worked on three "major" motion pictures you've never seen. That short spell in the film business nudged him into writing, first as a freelancer and later with Rolling Stone. He came to the Chronicle in 2004 as an entertainment editor and has since moved to writing full time.